A Defense of the
Zionist Slogan: “Let Us Be Like All the Nations!”

Dear Friends,

A book was published in
1977 which gave me a better understanding of the dominant Zionist
ideology and why it failed to appeal to most of the Jewish spiritual
seekers of that period. The book, “Letters to an American Jewish
Friend,” was written by Hillel Halkin, a young Zionist intellectual
living in Israel who grew up in America. Through the letters in this
book, Halkin argues that a viable Jewish life is only possible in
Israel. Halkin also attempts to defend the secular Zionist slogan, “Let
us be like all the nations.” He explains that this can refer to the
desire to create a secular Jewish culture which would emerge from living
in our own land, just as the cultures of other peoples emerge from their
living in their lands. Halkin expresses his hope that through speaking
Hebrew and living in Israel, this goal will be achieved, and he writes:

“While an
authentically, secular Jewish culture has yet to develop in Israel, the
foundations for it – and this is Zionism’s great achievement to
date – have been laid. Above all, this means that once again we are a
people speaking our own language and living in our own land.” (Letter
Five).

Halkin adds that a land
and language is “everything” – an emphasis which can remind us of the
following words of an earlier Zionist thinker, Jacob Klatzkin:

“In longing for our
land we do not desire to create there a base for the spiritual values of
Judaism.”

Although Halkin is a
fervent believer in secular Zionism, he expresses his disappointment
over the failure of the State of Israel to emulate the other nations by
developing its own national culture, and he writes:

“Perhaps in our
children’s children’s time we really will come to be in this land a
people like all the Gentiles, k’khol ha-goyim [like all the
nations]. My dear friend, I am not a religious Jew, and I do not
consider these words a reproach. Would we were like all the Gentiles
already, would we have what they have! No, our whole misfortune today is
that we are still not like them at all.” (Letter Five)

In a related critique,
Halkin writes:

“We have developed a
society whose one demand from everything, from a philosophical idea to
the label of a product on a shelf, is that it bear the seal of that
outside world that we have appointed the arbiter of our values and
tastes, as paupers once indentured themselves to a master when they
could no longer earn their own bread to eat.” (Ibid)

I recall reading an
article in the Jerusalem Post around ten years ago about a “cultural
exchange” program which brought a group of American teenagers to Israel,
in order to have a cultural exchange with a group of Israeli Jewish
teenagers. The reporter noted with delight that the American teenagers
discovered that the Israeli teenagers sang the same songs and had the
same cultural heroes as they did! This is an example of “cultural
exchange”?

As we discussed in
previous letters, the leaders of the World Zionist Organization wanted
secular nationalism to replace the Torah as the raison d’etre of our
nation. Through abandoning the unique spiritual culture of our nation,
these Zionist leaders actually developed a secular Israeli society with
no authentic culture of its own and which “imitates” all the nations.
Their slogan, “Let us become like all the nations,” is therefore
fulfilled in a literal sense.

Halkin admits that the
Chareidim foresaw this problem when the secular Zionist movement began,
and he writes that “they were the first body of opinion to raise the
possibility that a Jewish state might paradoxically prove as effective
an agent of cultural assimilation for its inhabitants as the Diaspora”
(ibid). He explains that the Chareidim believed that the attempt to
replace a Jewish identity based on the Torah with an identity based on
secular nationalism would ultimately fail, “since Jewish existence
deprived of its religious dimension was an absurd contradiction in
terms.” Halkin adds that the Chareidim felt that secular Zionism was
actually a movement of assimilation “concealed behind a deceptive veneer
of Jewish symbols and historical associations.”

Despite his own
disappointment at the lack of an authentic, secular Jewish culture in
Israel, Halkin states that he sees some signs of hope for the future. As
an example, he tells the following story:

His two secular
friends, Uri and Ya’ara, are a couple that eats on Shabbos a pot of
cholent. This is a traditional hot casserole dish for Shabbos lunch
which is cooked before Shabbos and which simmers all night on a covered
stove. Sephardic Jews call this hot dish by the Hebrew term chamin.
After describing the ingredients in Ya’ara’s cholent, Halkin writes:

“But it is not Ya’ara’s
cholent that this story is about. It’s the piece of colored string that
was wound around the pot and knotted intricately to its handle when she
took it out of the oven, so that she had to untie it in front of us
before we could sit down and eat. When we asked what it was doing there,
she answered with a laugh that she didn’t know herself.” (Ibid)

Halkin mentions that
Ya’ara learned how to make cholent from her mother, but when she asked
her mother for the reason for the knotted string, her mother didn’t know
either. He mother said that she got the custom from her mother, and she
speculated that perhaps it was some sort of charm to improve the
cholent’s taste. Halkin then tells us the rest of the story:

“There the matter
rested until Ya’ara met some time later an acquaintance from her
mother’s native town who happened to know the real reason for the string
on the cholent pot. In the old days, she told Ya’ara, the women had not
cooked the cholent at home. They brought it to the town bakery, where it
was put in the big bread oven on the eve of the Sabbath and picked up
the next morning for the Sabbath meal.”

The acquaintance
explained that the color of the string enabled Ya’ara’s grandmother to
tell which pot was hers when she came to fetch the cholent, and the knot
prevented anyone from opening the pot while it baked. Halkin is very
moved that the custom of the string on the Shabbos cholent pot was
preserved by Ya’ara, and he views this as a sign of hope that an
authentic, secular Jewish culture will emerge in Israel.

I must confess that I
was not very moved by Halkin’s example – one which reduces the biblical
mandate, “Keep the Shabbos day to sanctify it” (Deuteronomy 5:12), to
the eating of tasty cholent and the nostalgic remembrance of a custom to
tie a colored string on the cholent pot. I feel sad that Halkin and his
friends did not fully appreciate the awesome spiritual depth and beauty
of the mitzvos of Shabbos which their ancestors lovingly fulfilled. As
the teachings in upcoming letters will reveal, Ya’ara’s grandmother who
lovingly cooked the cholent before Shabbos was actually a
priestess. Each aspect of the ritual was part of her sacred service
in the Sanctuary of Shabbos.

My vision differs from
the vision of Halkin, for I see signs of hope that an authentic,
spiritual Jewish culture will emerge in Israel. For example, I have met
spiritually-searching Jews in this sacred land who are rediscovering the
sacred Shabbos that our people have kept for thousands of years – the
traditional Shabbos that enabled our people to experience weekly
spiritual renewal. As the secular Zionist thinker, Ahad Ha’am, once
said, “More than Israel has kept the Shabbos, the Shabbos has kept
Israel.”

Shalom,

Yosef Ben Shlomo
Hakohen (See below)

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